The Best Places to Eat in Central Illinois

"Guests can expect to pay $100 per person for dinner before drinks and tip, and yes, lest you think your eyes deceive you, that is a $600 bottle of wine on the list. Nando Milano, thus, could easily be written off as a restaurant oblivious to its location: Champaign is a college town, after all, and the folks who live there go to work wearing collars that are mostly blue, albeit a blue of a slightly whiter shade. But the restaurant’s sheer popularity proves that to be less of a deterrent than it might otherwise seem. Ask anyone in Champaign what the best restaurant in town is, and they’ll almost surely always answer, “Nando Milano.” Because good food is good food, right? That’s certainly the case with cavoletti ortolani, something not seen on the menus of other Italian restaurants in the area where the star is always going to be bottomless fettuccine alfredo. It is a “warm salad,” for lack of a better label, that comes with butternut squash, fried chickpeas, almonds, parmesan cheese, textures of Brussels sprouts, and truffle honey – in other words, everything wonderful in the world. For dessert, there is an affogato, something so simple that it could easily become a disaster, but which the staff here know how to make in a way that is quintessentially Italian. Speaking of the staff, the service at Nando Milano is a special kind of world-class — not because they are the gatekeepers of experience and make sure guests know they are just lucky to be there, but because they know what a night at Nando Milano means for most guests and make what could be rarefied and intimidating always feel welcoming and down to earth. Maybe that’s because Chef-owner Alessio Vullo opened the restaurant not to make money but as a way to keep his family together: with one Nando Milano already open in Chicago, Vullo packed up and moved to Champaign to open one there to follow his wife on her medical internship. The importance of family: that right there is something everyone in Central Illinois can relate to, if not also to a dinnertime soundtrack featuring sultry jazz covers of P!nk’s greatest hits." - Timothy DePeugh